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Let us journey back in time two years to the very last BotCon convention, BotCon 2016. This convention featured a Beast Wars Combiner Wars set of exclusive toys, and a comic story that was set as a prequel to the Beast Wars cartoon placed at the end of the Great War of G1. However, this was not what was originally planned for that convention's toys and comic story. Originally, the theme of that year was going to be for the critically-acclaimed, alternate universe series known as Beast Wars: Uprising, a series who success and popularity only really took off in the months following the convention. Prior to then, the first plans for BotCon 2016 were to flesh out the still-growing world of Beast Wars: Uprising, but Hasbro requested that the theme instead be Combiner Wars.

Now, the Facebook and Twitter for Night Shining, Inc. (the new company now in charge of RoboCon, A.K.A. Pete's Robot Convention, the unofficial spiritual successor to BotCon) have shared some of these preliminary concepts for the Beast Wars: Uprising-themed ideas for BotCon 2016, which can all be seen below.

A preliminary BotCon 2016 souvenir concept for Undermine aka Unit-3 from the BW2 Lio Convoy mold. He was actually dropped from the final proposal, but then the proposal got changed to Combiner Wars and he was added back in using the Streetwise mold.

Check out what would have been the convention exclusives and story for BotCon 2016 before it was recommended that it be changed to Combiner Wars. Which do you prefer? Let is know in the comments. Definitely a few here that the team what worked on the sets would have still liked to have seen!

Story: War has gripped Cybertron for millions of years, the deadly stalemate threatening to wipe Cybertronian civilization from existence. Both Autobot and Decepticon, their ranks depleted, have turned to creating a new generation of fighters to carry on the conflict. These Maximals and Predacons are thus forced into a lethal battle not of their making, forced to arm themselves and continue a war that they know nothing about. As the struggle rages, groups on both sides of the battlefield realize that their true enemies stand not before them, but behind them as the oligarchy at home. A new war looms, a BEAST WARS… The uprising has begun!

But first, here's a closer look at how the Maximal Security troopers' head decoes could have worked:(Thanks to @seibertroncom for the original images)

"When there's gold feathers, punch behind you!!"“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”-- C.S. Lewis